MapsIndoors Gets Indoor Street View Feature

Do you want to take the digital experience of your venue to new heights?

This week we’re finishing the support of a brand new MapsIndoors feature that can help you meet the rising digital expectations: Meet IndoorView.

Just like Google Maps Street View, IndoorView offers users an on-site experience from the comfort of their home. But, instead of taking users on a virtual walk in an unknown neighborhood, it lets them step inside your business and explore your spaces.

Why your business needs a virtual tour on its website

It’s estimated that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements each day, and in 2008 the average American processed 34 gigabytes of content daily. A number that is likely to be even higher today considering the amount of time we spend on socials. This has made us experts in scanning and ignoring content and it gets harder and harder to catch people’s attention.

As a result, content needs to be more and more engaging. Just think about it, when Facebook was still in its early stages, it was all about written posts and updates. After a while these updates started to drown in the endless feed of written posts, so we began to combine written posts with photos to draw attention. However, soon the same thing happened with the photos. So, we started posting pictures with memes, but this also lost its ability to stand out in the feed and so we moved on to gifs and videos.

Virtual tours are an excellent way to make your website stand out from the crowd and catch the attention of your target audience. According to the Norman Nielsen Group, the first 10 seconds of a web page visit are critical for users' decision to stay or leave. “(...) users are extremely skeptical, having suffered countless poorly designed web pages in the past. People know that most web pages are useless, and they behave accordingly to avoid wasting more time than absolutely necessary on bad pages.” If you can make your website visitors stay 30 seconds or longer, there's a fair chance that they'll stay much longer — often 2 minutes or more, which is an eternity on the web.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, imagine how much a virtual tour is worth

There are far more benefits to virtual tours than a more engaging website. Below you’ll find some of the most important benefits for retail, airports, stadiums, convention centers, and universities.

Retail

Excite your customers

Today’s consumer is research-obsessed and especially three reasons stand out when researching why people are so intent to know before they go: It helps them get excited, it makes them feel more confident, and it helps them create the best experience.

The offer of a virtual tour could whip up some excitement about your venue in regards to potential customers, particularly if they're in the decision phase. With such a feature, the scales could be tipped in your advantage over a competitors, and could open the door for many more customers.

Create the ultimate shopping experience

Retail is changing. Experience is more important than ever and retailers need to reimagine stores and malls if they want them to remain relevant places that customers keep wanting to come back to. They need to be more than just places to transact. This has paved the way for retailment - retail marketing through entertainment and experiences.

Shopping malls have been centers of entertainment for years, but as consumer behaviour changes, competition increases, and in-store expectations grow, they continue to exceed our wildest dreams. With a virtual tour you can show potential customers how amazing your mall (or store) is even before they step in the door. Of course, you could just tell them, like all of your competitors, but why tell them, when you can show them?

Airports

Let the vacation begin at the airport

Another industry that is increasingly becoming a center of entertainment is the airport industry.

For most passengers, airports are associated with stress, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Allow passengers to discover your airport from the comfort of their couch, so they know exactly where to go and what to explore as soon as they’ve walked through security. Let their vacation begin at your airport.

Stadiums and convention centers

Increase sales of hospitality packages

Event and meeting venues, such as convention centers and stadiums, can potentially increase sales of hospitality packages with virtual tours.

Allowing event organizers to explore your facilities even before talking to you increases the chances of getting more relevant inquiries. When you give potential customers the chance to discover your spaces, you give them the chance to picture their event in your settings. You also make their work of planning and coordinating easier, which again increases the chance of them picking your venue.

How it works

Interactive panoramas like the ones we know from Google Maps Street View, is composed by a sequence of 360 degree images. To create these images, you can either use the official Google Maps Street View app or get a certified photographer to help you. When the images are uploaded to Google Maps Street View, go to your MapsIndoors CMS and link your points of interest to the right pictures in Street View. IndoorView is available on desktop only.

If you want to read more about MapsIndoors, don't forget to check out the pages below.